Ginni Thomas letter points to January 6th hearings potentially extending beyond June
Twice in the past week, Liz Cheney has made offhand remarks that could potentially be interpreted as the January 6th Committee keeping the door open for holding additional public hearings that go beyond the initial six hearings scheduled for June. We weren’t sure if Cheney’s remarks were something or nothing. But now a new letter from the committee suggests we may indeed be looking at additional hearings later this summer.
After announcing earlier today that it’s seeking the testimony of Ginni Thomas, the committee has now sent a publicly posted letter to Thomas, formally asking her to testify. Notably, the committee is asking Thomas to testify during the week of July 6th, or failing that, the week of July 11th.
This isn’t a subpoena, but standard procedure for a potentially cooperative witness is to initially request testimony, rather than jumping straight to a subpoena. The last thing the committee wants is to spook Thomas into trying to back out of testifying. If subpoenaed, Thomas could potentially drag things out in court for several months before being compelled to testify.
So why is the committee giving Thomas a few weeks to comply? This kind of thing is serious stuff. Congressional witnesses are under a de facto type of oath, where they can be criminally referred for lying to Congress. Witnesses also typically hire attorneys to cover their legal interests, and so on. The committee is also asking Ginni Thomas to “preserve and provide” relevant documents and evidence, meaning she’ll first have to review everything she has. It’s all a big production, and not something that can be requested one day and conducted the next day.
If the committee is having Ginni Thomas give (presumably private, but also presumably videotaped) testimony in the first half of July, it obviously won’t be included in the six public hearings that have been announced, all of which are scheduled for June. So this would point to the committee circling back and holding one or more additional public hearings a bit later on, which would include an expose into the election antics between Thomas and John Eastman.
If this happens, it won’t come as a surprise. These kinds of public hearings tend to kick up a lot of dirt and knock over a number of proverbial ant hills, with the revelations leading to new lines of investigation along with new suspects and witnesses. It makes us wonder if the committee was always planning on holding additional public hearings later this summer.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Ginni Thomas could merely be bluffing about testifying to the committee, given that she almost has to be under DOJ investigation by now, and that she’d be risking further incriminating herself by running her mouth. But she does seem unstable enough to honestly believe that she can use her whacked out conspiracy theories to convince everyone of her innocence. We’ll see.
